Does Europe hate libraries?

It was a fail. The 27th meeting of the World Intellectual Property Organisations' Standing Committee of Copyright and Related Rights (WIPO SCCR) in Geneva hit a dead end. Why should you care, we are hearing you asking. Geneva? WIPO? Well yes, Geneva and the Unites Nations agency WIPO matter, and so do the copyright issue discussed there last week.

On May 2, the European Commission and Council representatives did not agree on advancing work on copyright exemptions for libraries and archives. Their respective stern positions literally killed the meeting. At around 1:30 am on May 3, SCCR Chair Martin Moscoso Villacorta (Director Copyright at the Peruvian Intellectual Property Agency Indecopi) acknowledged that consensus on the week's work had become impossible. Representatives of Library and Archive Organisations called the EU blockade shameful. “The EU hates libraries” tweeted Knowledge Ecology Director James Love.

The fight about copyright in the digital age had been raging for years. It took WIPO member states years to agree on a first international copyright exception to balance protection and access rights. The much applauded Marrakesh Treaty confers some rights to blind people and their organisations in an effort to end what has been called the ‘book famine for blind people’. More on this in a previous Internet Policy Review article.

The EU, which officially signed the Marrakesh Treaty last week (alongside France and Greece) has for years been arguing against the exemption in favour of blind people, arguing the market could solve the problem. Now again, Europe positions itself as the sharpest opponent against copyright exceptions in the digital world, this time playing hardball with libraries and archives.

“Libraries have to function in the digital environment,” India's delegate said during the debate in Geneva. Given that printed books would more and more vanish, “how libraries should start lending books digitally” had to be addressed and enabled in a treaty while protecting owner's rights at the same time. “We also have to facilitate libraries to make these books accessible to the students and researchers,” he said. Better access was very important in the information society.

EU: ‘text-based work’ on library exception unacceptable

Together with the so called group B countries (e.g., US, Japan) the EU argued against the library and archive exception favoured by a considerable number of Latin American, African and Asian countries. This position opposes copyright limitations for educational, teaching and research institutions and disabled people left out of the Marrakesh Treaty (e.g., hearing impaired persons).

Compared to other group B countries, including the US, which made an effort to present a document on “Objectives and Principles For Exceptions and Limitations for Libraries and Archives”, the EU not only underlined that “we are not willing to consider a legally binding instrument in this area”. It blocked agreement of the final SCCR27 report by rejecting the notion of “text-based work” with regard to the topic.

Despite appeals from the representatives of Brazil, India and Kenya to acknowledge the input by their delegations and also the requests to consolidate the respective texts on the table, Oliver Hall-Allen, First Counsellor, Delegation of the European Union to the United Nations Office at Geneva, and a representative from the Greek Presidency firmly rejected the wording until after midnight, May 2.

Harsh reactions from library representatives

“We think they're trying to kill the exceptions agenda at WIPO altogether,” criticised Ellen Broad, Manager Digital Projects and Policy at the International Federation of Libraries Association (IFLA). “They have come here with one goal in mind this week, and that's to ensure discussions on exceptions for libraries and archives, and for education, are gutted if not halted entirely. This is shameful,” she added.

Representatives of various library and archive organisations intervened many times during the SCCR27 debates explaining the gap between existing copyright exceptions that are in many places limited to analogue business and the digital reality. Publishers in many instances were the real regulators in digital copyright through contracts, they warned. Legislation on technical protection measures and digital rights management helped to circumvent existing copyright exceptions where they existed. Libraries and archives invited delegations to attend a special event on this issue.

By rejecting discussions on potential library and archive exceptions, the EU Commission and Council were not taking on board the views of experts they themselves had paid millions, Amelia Andersdotter, member of the Pirate Party in the European Parliament, tweeted in reaction to the developments at Geneva. The study quoted deplores the variety in implementing copyright limitations for scientific work and firmly recommends to consider new limitations on copyright to allow data mining and analysis.

Broad said, the EU had “wasted the time of delegates, observers, and the hard working WIPO Secretariat, who came here in good faith for a productive week of discussions not only on exceptions and limitations, but on broadcasting.”

Broadcasting Treaty discussion results also stalled

As a compromise on the inclusion of ‘text-based work’ for copyright limitations on libraries and archives, and also on the second package educational and scientific institutions and persons with other disabilities looked always further out of reach in the late night hours, Brazil fought back. It withdrew its agreement to earlier compromises for a future Broadcasting Treaty. The one and a half decade old Broadcasting Treaty proposal was meant to establish new protection rights for broadcasting organisations against ‘signal piracy’.

In the end the EU, which favours a maximum protection for broadcasters, won its fight against concessions on the library exception, yet lost what it won on additional protection for broadcasters. India's delegate certainly argued that the committee would have to come back to ‘text-based’ work in any case, as all work on new instruments was based on texts by nature.

The next WIPO rendez-vous meant to straighten out differences is in June 2014.